food and a private equity firm kkr with clayton gba and rice. fcc steps in and says it could crimp competition and very sad to say it could more buying power and they could offer things that lower prices. they also step in on other deals including t-mobile, comcast or at&t and home goods for one of its rivals. dagen: stock prices hitting their highest level since 1996. let's get a closer look at the asian markets. tracey chang is live in beijing, a reporter for chinese state television. reporter: good morning, dagen. asian markets are higher today. the composite recovers gaining 2.5% by the quiddity release from china's mega-ipo subscriptions last week. markets recover the hang seng gaining about three tenths of 1%. the companies listed in hong kong outperformed the broader market adding about half of a percent. japanese shares have a good trading day. the nikkei up 3 cents to 1% about this and that are useful not to fault on the dad and exporters are higher. let me remind you it has 20% this year. south korea to cost me with two tenths of 1% un

capital safety is a global provider of fall protection byipment, acquired by kkr $1.2 billion in 2012s and acquisitions this year will be the record in 2007 and the boom is poised to continue through 2017. that's according to blackstone group senior managing director john suzuki. >> the investment cycle and expansions are normally seven or eight years. potentially we are looking at expansion that could be as long as nine years. i actually think you are going to see a record amount of m&a activity beyond 2007 this year. and potentially this year after. the: he named telecommunications health care, and energy sectors most likely to see more deals. carnival corp. reported second-quarter product that beat estimates. they also lower the range of its 2015 earnings forecast. carnival says bookings for the next three quarters are running well ahead of last year. carnival another cruise lines have shifted ships to the caribbean from the mediterranean in recent years to counter weakness in european economies. the owner of all of garden will split off about 430 properties and transfer them to a

the outmanager monies include kkr, blackstone and the carlyle group.cantly in german trade. >>> goldman sachs vice chairman michael sherwood has told cnbc the pension time bomb is one of the biggest developments. let's get out to louisa. lou, take it away. >> yeah high guys. the conference starts officially around an hour and a half's time, somewhere around there. goldman sachs warming up for the actual conference takes place. elsewhere, 1400 people will be gathering talking about the general environment, talking about markets, listening to business leaders. they will be giving addresses as well. yes, i did catch up with michael sherwood earlier. and he spoke about the pension time bomb which is a huge issue where they have to invest a certain amount of their portfolio in the bond market. with the record low levels for a number of years now, a lot of people anticipating that yields are going to stay low, at least for the time being which could be the next couple of years, where would that leave the pension funds and the insurance industry. we spoke abo

blackstone's competition was kkr. black rock's was fidelity.: when you're thinking about this issue, we did think about blackstone versus kkr or something like that. the interesting thing in private equity is that blackstone has put a lot of distance between them and their traditionsal alternative rivals. as they have gotten bigger they're looking at new pools of money, especially retail investors. matt: you look at this chart and you can see that blackrock, as far as total assets under management, destroys blackstone. $4.8 trillion to $310 billion. blackstone actually makes more money in profits. jason: on the same basis, about a billion dollars more per year. when you look at how investors are valuing this you saw that huge difference in terms of total assets under management. when you look at market cap, they are only about $10 billion apart. these are firms that are competing, not just for money from retail investors but even in the public sphere as well as companies -- as investors try to ss who they will invest in. matt: you were explaini

at $2.5 billion for kkr. they spend a little more than $1 billion to buy capital safety in 2012.hey make our nurses and lifelines for construction workers. a fitness chain that charges $10 a month is going public. planet fitness says that they are the largest operator of fitness centers in the united states with 1000 locations and 7 million members. those are your top stories. shares arell off-line. verizon closed on its deal to buy the tech company. tim armstrong will still run a well as they owned unit of verizon. he will report to the verizon president of innovation. i asked him why he is reporting to marni, and not the verizon ceo. tim: i was excited about the deal. after being in the leadership , thatgs, i told marni i'm open to one plus one equals 10. i'm excited to be in her group. our job is to make the whole team as successful as we can. betty: in the press release i noticed that a digital media service as part of verizon will report directly to 10. will there be overlap? formed a newn organization to drive revenue diversity in the future, transforming what verizon would

question is on kkr, i'm backing up the truck, i'm going to give you blk and bx have been crazy backing> i n don't want any trucks backing up because the fed is about to raise rates and high yielding stocks come in. these stocks come down. that's just the way it will always be. gary in new york. >> caller: good evening jim, i thank you for your time and i value your opinions highly. i travel on the northeast corridor on the am track and see cfs freight trains moving past me or standing still at the station. the volume is incredible 75 to 100 cars at one time. >> right. problem is coal. these guys -- the coal numbers are bad, they are not getting better. i want you to be careful. rail uz have to see their quarters. have their numbers cut. that's on union pacific, and only then can you put the trigger. charles in new jersey. >> caller: this is chuck. 45 from spring lake new jersey and i'd like to ask you about plum creek lumber pcl, price earnings ratio, 34% dividend and lumber is a big inflation. >> yes but i got to tell you this is the level where 4%ers are going to yield 5% because fed

to carlisle, i kind of feel sorry for carlisle because the comparison between carlisle and apollo or kkrs to real estate and the blackstone group is inevitable. remember, blackstone got the only call from general electric's when ge wanted to unload $23 billion of real estate assets. they did not call carlyle or any of the other guys, so i wanted to know -- brendan: you are making private equity sound like high school. erik: on a date? brendan: go ahead. erik: it is kind of a date i guess. didn't really work out that way but here is what glen duncan had to say about what it is like to compete with blackstone in the real estate business. >> i think there are some real estate businesses and our competitors that blacks and have a wonderful real estate business. they right now are very much the standard of industry that people talk about. i don't think that diminishes the performance of our real estate business at all. i am 66 and when i stand next to my kids i look really tall. when i sent next the washington wizards, i look really short you know. erik: that is what it is like. a 6'6" guy wa

brand name's being bought by the likes of blackstone and kkr.rendan: we could not have a better guest than luigi. this is exactly what your work has been about. our -- are leveraged buyout's good for america? luigi: i think on average, yes. they have contributed to the transformation of the banking industry in a way that we've not seen in europe. one of the reasons why the labor market is -- the economy is doing better is because the united states has transformed fast and the leveraged buyout helps that. vonnie: the jpmorgan flag is at half mast today. he said you opened your first chemical bank account. mike: he started at chemical bank in 1975. two years later, i had my first bank account. vonnie: he was at jpmorgan before was jpmorgan. and he almost went to blackstone. jason: he did. he is very close with steve schwarzman. they had done many deals over the course of the 192090's. steve approached jimmy be my number two. they came within days of doing it. that job eventually went to tony james, who has been at dlj. blackstone has gone on to do

vonnie: two and a half -- $2.5 billion deal. 3m is going to buy a company called capital safety from kkrfety founded back in 1998 manufactures things like harnesses and lanyards. 3m, and enterprise value of $2.5 billion. 3m says it is assuming debt of about $3.7 billion. it will hurt a price per share basis by four cents. matt: there is a much bigger company will focus on right now. olivia sterns joins us with the ceo of walmart. olivia: thank you so much. i'm pleased to be joined by doug mcmillon, the ceo of walmart stores. i want to start with the news. walmart took this decision to stop selling any merchandise with the confederate flag. why was at the right move? doug: first of all, our hearts and prayers go out to the victims and their families and all the people of charleston. we do not want to sell anything that offends people. i was surprised we carry some of these items through our marketplace, third-party sellers online. when we saw that they were out there, we decided to discontinue. olivia: the move appears to be part of a growing trend of walmart really sticking its neck out

supermarket chain has received offers from private equity firms including car kyle -- carlyle group and kkr the unit could fetch more than $5 billion. francine: billionaire investor carl icahn has sold his shares of netflix, reading a profit of at least $1.6 billion in three years. netflix is a top performing stock in the standard & poor's 500 index this year. manus: h&m has reported second-quarter profit that missed analyst estimates. as it battled with the strength of the u.s. dollar, income rose. francine: up next, gmail introduces an undo send feature. we will look at some classic e-mail blunders that might have been avoided with such a function. ♪ francine: welcome back to "the pulse." we've had some breaking news on greece. we understand, this is that greece and mr. tsipras have been given a deadline. he only has six minutes from now to submit a proposal. it is unclear whether this is something technical, so if they don't have it before 11:00 local time, they can't actually meet when the leaders are scheduled or whether this is to put pressure on greece to come up with the goods. manu

biggest in the krkt, mack as you know is with kkr a senior advisor. those are two favorites right now on wall street to be treasure secretary. people are saying that john mack is clearly angling for that treasury secretary job. i have ran that by john a couple of months ago, you know we asked to put the question to him fox business he laughed it off saying, i'm having fun in the private sector but clearly his colleagues inside moore stanley say that is why he did that public announcement on hillary clinton on your show. >> thank you my friend. charlie gasparino back to the dow i told you we wanted concentrate on this. mentioned and back to positive territory. back over 18,000, big catalyst as i told you surprising economic news. perhaps more importantly mortgage applications running at a better than 8% plus rate as americans get off fence to commit themselves to housing. oil issues are up xeemed three of the dow 30 stocks are oil related. so when they move up, own course it is not surprising to see the dow move up one day if not it is a trend we thoug

. >>> liquidity firm kkr paying almost their 1 million to settle charges it passed on more than $17 millionssful pieout expenses to investors. packaged food company conagra food disc raoul corp less than three years after paying $5 billion to buy the company and shares of for-profit education company apollo education group dropping down a whopping 15% today as the university of phoenix operator continues to struggle with declining enrollment and lackluster profits. ty? >> stocks well off their highs and with a little bit of a gain about 11 points on the dow. the focus still very much on negotiations over greece. the debt threat there if greece leaves the euro. what effect will that have on stocks going forward, as the saying goes. let's bring in michael farr my washington, d.c. friend, cnbc contributor. michael, great as always to see you. >> thank you. >> there are a lot of cross-currents we've dealt with in the first half of the year, many of which are going to persist into the second half i believe. greece ain't going to be over quickly. rising rates ain't going to happen quickly. puerto

. >> so my deal right from the very beginning of acquisition or the stock sale to kkr in silver lake time as we became a public company and then i -- i would give that up and just be on the board. >> i don't know you well but the idea of quiet period and bob parsons would not go well together because you're a pretty outspoken dude. >> some people have said that. >> some people. everybody says it. >> yeah. >> everybody says it. what was the biggest reason? obviously we think about it all the time. what were the one or two things that really kind of steered you away from wanting to be part of it, the control, the oversight, the style of management that we all know you have? >> well you know if -- it was all that marcus and, you know also it was encouragement from my partners. >> yeah. >> you know they knew that my skills were as a private company operator and not a public company operator although you know we developed enough rapport that had i wanted to be chairman at the time they would have let me do it but they sat down and explained to me exactly what my responsibilities would be

also bayer is selling it's diabetes care business to panasonic health care holdings which is backed by kkrnd panasonic. the price tag is $1.2 billion. and alibaba's executive chairman jack ma is on a visit to the u.s. this week. we talked about some of the news he was making yesterday but get a look at some of the other headlines. his chinese e-commerce giant doesn't want to take on amazon and ebay in the united states. he wants to help small u.s. businesses sell more goods in china. he's getting a lot of attention for this comment. he wishes alibaba never went public. he told an ooechtevent that life was different for alibaba but adds it was much worse now. he said if i had another life i would keep my company private. this is a year later. >> easy to say except for things have changed. he points out extra scrutiny from investors. extra scrutiny from regulators and the media. >> how else do you get it valued up where it is. it's made him the richest man in china. >> money doesn't buy you everything. >> he's one of the few that i think done care about the money. >> also in expanding your b